Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Crime
Pays:Bradley
Birkenfeld, onetime manager of UBS's Geneva based American Desk, went
public with 19,000 illegal American accounts holding over $20 billion
being hidden from the US tax collector. The US Justice Department
imprisoned him for stealing the data. The US Treasury Department
awarded him $104 million in finder's fees.

Cannon
Fodder:Turkey's Erdogan,
wanting a goodly supply
of foot soldiers to build his new empire, says no Muslim
family should use birth
control and that having
less than three children is “treason”. Unless you are a
Kurd, of course.

See
No Evil, Say No Evil:The
Australian government tourist
bureau says
that the scientists who report that “a third of the central and
northern Great Barrier Reef corals are dead” have been out in the
sun too long. They also say that the UN report about the increasing
damage
to Tasmanian forests from global warming overstates things. And
they don't want potential visitors to know that their biggest tourist
attraction as become the
poster child for global warming.

Pointed
View: It is
not Donald Trump that is destroying the Republican Party, the
Republican Party self-destructed, he's just picking up the pieces.

Monday, May 30, 2016

Eye
Of The Beholder:
The US has
congratulated the leaders of the Brazilian coup for their support of
democracy in overthrowing the democratically elected president.

Making
Love to War:
There are about 15,850 nuclear warheads in the world today. Russia
and the US both have about 7,500 of them, leaving 300 for France, 250
for China, 215 to the UK and about 100 each for Pakistan, India and
Israel. North Korea is thought to have a couple. Barack Obama,
president of the only country to kill several hundred thousand
civilians with atomic weapons, is proposing to spend
$1 trillion on upgrading the US nuclear arsenal while hugging
survivors in Hiroshima. I don't suppose this is the place to mention
that more
than 795 million people in the world do
not have enough food.

Just
In:
Research shows that sharks have personalities. Sharks. The ones
that live in the oceans. Not Donald.

The
Check Cleared;
Now that the Saudis have paid the US for all those cluster bombs
they've been dropping on Yemeni civilians and those pesky Doctors
Without Borders, the US isn't going to sell them any more. Don't
worry, they won't go to waste.

That
Hopey,
Changey
Thing:Various rather blind
Democratic professionals keep licking their chops over Hillary as
America's
next president(R)
entering the White House accompanied by massive 'down-ticket'
victories on her coat-tails and banishing the R's to the back
benches. Allow me to point out that Obama entered the White House
with a 9 vote majority in the Senate, complete control of the House
and promptly surrendered to Wall Street and the corporations and to
the Republicans. And if you don't think Hillary and Bill are big
money, did you and your spouse pile up $25 million a year lately?
Besides...

She's
Not Going To Win:
Even if Secretary Clinton does not get indicted, which she
should be because she obviously and admittedly has broken several
sections of Title 18 of the US Code and
then lied about it, she is unlikely to defeat Mr. Trump.
Everybody keeps saying that Trump will not win. They've been saying
that since the first primary. They kept saying it as he knocked
16
wanna-be's off the podium. People who say the Republicans will
not unite behind Donald don't understand that they will unite under
the
‘Never Hillary’ banner. Republicans will vote Republican –
it's a tribal thing. Clinton does not enthuse
- not
those she considers hers already, and
not those she thinks should support her, just because...
Trump will inspire and motivate more first-time voters than any
Republican in history. And he will win if she's the competition.

Stomp
Out
Food Stamps!
Just as Republicans have feared, poor children who have access to
food stamps become healthier and better off adults and
may vote Democratic.
We must act now to end this program and keep them in their place.

Reap/Sow:
Airlines
charge for bags, so shortsighted travelers opt to stand in line for a
couple of hours so they can drag their luggage onto the plane with
them instead of waiting 20 minutes at the end of the flight for their
baggage. They'd rather make several hundred people wait in line than
pay their own way. Don't blame TSA, blame the airlines and the cheap
bastard with the roll-on bag.

Friday, May 27, 2016

Not
only is this the Memorial Day weekend – although we've long since
either forgotten or abandoned that which we were to remember – but
I devoted yesterday to celebrating my granddaughters, the
valedictorian and salutatorian of their high school class. And that
was most memorable.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Politicians
believe that voters can be talked into ignoring their own
experiences.

Confusion:
Why is it that FOX can slant the news and promote conservative
nonsense but Facebook can't? I thought freedom of the press belonged
to the guy that owns the press. I'm a lot more offended that
Facebook thinks it is alright to
watch and listen to you over your cell phone.

Shame:
Logging in Poland's
Bialowieza
forest has begun. This is the last large stand of primeval trees
remaining in Europe and their destruction by Polish capitalists who
want to turn the trees into euros is a dispicable as cutting down the
Redwoods would be. Oh, wait...

Discuss:
Do you want your wife and daughter to ride on a bus in India
now
that the government is going to
install panic buttons “to curb sex attacks?”

Install
Linux:
If you are tired of Microsoft's
“deceitful and nasty” bullying to force you to install yet
another buggy version of Windows, why don't you get Linux – either
the Ubuntu
or Mintflavors
of linux are pretty easy for those switching from Windows.

Free
At Last:
A US appellant court let BofA out of paying the $1.27 billion fraud
penalty over Countrywide's defective mortgages because “"The
trial evidence fails to demonstrate the contemporaneous fraudulent
intent” necessary to prove that the fraud was intentional. Mind you
the fraud occurred, several billion dollars worth of it, but it
wasn't intentional. Citibank shouldn't rush to pay their $425
million fine
for “blatant rigging” of interest rates. After all, it may
be “blatant” but surely
it wasn't “intentional.” Even
though CFTC
has imposed over $5.08 billion in penalties against banks and brokers
to address rigging and manipulation various
markets, no one has been charged with a crime, much less actually
prosecuted or
jailed.

Wordsmithery:
Senator Elizabeth Warren sees Donald Trump as a “small, insecure
moneygrubber.” He thought it was a compliment.

Safety
First:
Republicans have voted to void regulations that would require that
financial advisers act in the best interest of their clients. They
argued that if financial advisers have to act in the best interest of
their clients there would not be enough profit in it to make it
worthwhile.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Once
Upon A Time:
Last week Mrs. Clinton said
that
Mr. Bill
would be “in charge of revitalizing the economy.” You can see why
she might want to say that, since people think
they remember that his time in the White House was all milk and
honey, because of the economic boom, even though mostly it was just
that “he
had the good luck to hold office when good things were happening for
reasons unrelated to politics.” At
the time he was busy shipping millions of jobs overseas, building
private prisons and filling them with young black men while kicking
their mothers and sisters off welfare... things he had the bad luck
to actually do. “Will
Bill Clinton play an important role if Mrs. Clinton wins? ... it will
be important to remember what went right and why on Bill’s watch,”
and
what went very, very wrong.

Conspirators'
Theory:
The Saudis,
who financed and most likely planned the 9/11 attacks now claim the
US “blew up the World Trade Center in order to create the War On
Terror.”

Huh?
Under a new law, the US asserts the right to go anywhere in the
world and arrest and whisk back to the US (or some convenient
way-station) anyone who produces anything used in or resulting in the
production of drugs – coca, opium, marijuana – if there is
“probable cause to believe” they should have known we didn't want
them doing this sort of thing.

Consumers:
Switzerland is considering paying its citizens a basic $2,500
a month and
two
thirds of the British public support a universal basic income, as
more and more people find the economy does not need their productive
efforts but does need them as customers. Places like China, which
has a shallow consumer basis is rapidly
laying off workers -60,000 at a time - and replacing them with AI
and automation. The number of “disposable”
Americans continues to grow as the captains of industry ignore
their role as consumers.

Follow
The Money:
The Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado where Robert Dear went on
a killing rampage is being sued by one of his victims and the widow
of another because Dear has no money and they think Planned
Parenthood does.

Lost,
If Found Please Return:
Officials in charge of the Fukushima
clean-up haave
revealed that 600
tons of radioactive material melted through the pressure containment
vessel and is missing. Gone. Ooops.

Telling
The
Truth:Mr
Krugman has set out to paint Mr. Sanders – who
according to The Oracle has a problem both in facing reality and
in admitting mistakes - with the same tar and feathers he has spread
on Donald Trump, pointing out that some “disaffected white men”
back Bernie. Gasp! And the young? Well, “because they're very
young...[they] dismiss practical arguments about why all their
dreams can’t be accomplished.” Then there are Sandernistas who
find “ fun and ego gratification of being part of The Movement,”
whom Krugman dismisses because he found their parents to be
distasteful when he was young and serious. Besides, the young
haven't learned to remain quiet and respectful when their leaders act
in deceitful and undemocratic ways. And some of Sander's supporters
have been sucked in by the Fox news anti-Hillary campaign. And there
are “policy intellectuals who have for whatever reason been
excluded from the [Clinton's] inner circles” and are envious of Mr.
Krugman, who knows
the secret handshake.
According to Mr. Krugman, who knows all these things, Mr. Sanders
“is no longer helping the progressive cause,” a complaint that
stems from Krugman mistaking Ms. Clinton for a progressive.

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Shame:The
US has released an Afghan man
who was captured in 2002 and suspected of making bombs. In 2008 he
was charged with conspiracy to support terrorism and those charges
were dismissed in 2011. So a man who was held without charges for 6
years and denied a trial for 3 more had to wait only
5
more years to be released. And we're the good
guys, right?

Got
A Match? After
we burn all of the fossil fuels that are known to exist in the world,
global temperatures will rise by another 20F, warming the arctic by
perhaps 35F within 200 years.

If...
Then: Hillary
claims she is winning the popular vote, and the media elite echo the
claim. It is not true. In states where there are primate votes, she
has won a plurality. But this ignores the equivalent of the “popular
vote” in caucus states, most of which Sanders has won. It is
deceitful for Clinton to make this claim and despicable for the media
to repeat it. Besides, it's the superdelegates that she and her
consiglieres selected who will select her to be the candidate.

Sobering
Data: The
National Highway Traffic Safety folks say that drivers under the
influence of marijuana were “no more likely to crash than who had
not used any drugs or alcohol prior to driving.” Those on alcohol
continue accumulate DUI/DWI tickets until they kill someone.

It's
A SNAP: About
all those folks living high on food stamps: A family on food stamps
gets $253 a month in benefits, about
$127 per month
per person. Most food stamp recipients live in Republican controlled
states (think on that for a bit). Half of us – those between 20 and
65 will need this sort of help at some time in their lives. The
majority of SNAP recipients have jobs (but don't make enough to
survive), or are over 65. One in five of the little leeches is a
child. Let 'em eat cake.

Growth
Spurt:The
job news is happy,
happy, happy . The economy is growing and everything is great.
Except it isn't. The
good news – that job
openings
are back to their 2001 peak
is what gets the cheers. But
the rate of hiresis
only back to the average of the previous expansion (2002-2007) and,
worse, the higher rate
of hires has not led to
payroll growth. This
is the first time since the 1930s that the working age population has
grown faster than jobs.What we're seeing is
just faster turnover
of jobs. Hourly
wages are growing even slower than they
did in 2001-2007.

Just
Asking: If we
charted the rise of globalization, the increase in wealth at the top
and the increase in destablization, political repression, refugee
flight and conflicts, would we discover somehing?

Monday, May 23, 2016

Budgetary
Save:
Oklahoma's governor saved the state a lot of money by vetoing the
legislatures bill that said it was
perfectly acceptable for a woman to have an abortion but a
felony for a doctor to perform an abortion. Several million dollars
would have gone into a doomed attempt to defend this idiocy up
through the federal appellate courts.

Corrected
Version:Creditors out to crush
any trace of Syriza
disobedience. What
made them think it was limited to Greece?

Day
Late...: It is
claimed that “AI will
create ‘useless class’ of humans”.
We already have a “useless class” of humans, according to the
capitalists - not needed for production and not wanted as customer.
Look at it this way, if your job is not protected under the famous
“free trade” agreements, you are part of the useless underclass.

Trust,
But Verify:
Taking a page from the auto industry and big banks, LinkedIn
just revised its
estimate of how many accounts were compromised by hackers back in
2012. It was over 100 million, not the 6.5 million they had
previously admitted.

Ins
and Outs:Donald Trump says
“I'm not advocating
guns in classrooms,” but maintains
that “teachers should
have guns in classrooms.”

This
Doesn't End Well:
Over any significant period of time rising house prices in the US
cannot coexist with declining incomes.

Crime
Marches On: If
steps are not quickly taken, Australia's Great Barrier Reef will
become “terminal” within five years. Steps will not be taken. If
you are a Scuba diver, book your travel soon or it will look like the
dead desert that the reefs off Florida have already become.

Big
Gulp:
The demand for food and water from ever swelling
populations (especially
in the world's megacities) will lead to exploding food prices,
extreme watershortages, civil unrest
and economic breakdown. As long expected and predicted.

If
You Cannot Afford Your Prescription... Why is Big Pharma eager to help you pay for your medicine?
Because they'll help cover your copay so the government will have to
pony up the larger profits for them. You thought they had your
interests at heart? Silly. Profits, thats the word.

Politically
Incorrect:
Someone finally got around to asking Native Americans what they
thought of the Redskins. Pretty much they thought the name was fine,
but a few winning seasons would make their approval of the team's
name unanimous.

Merry
Go Round: Five
big banks and four traders
have been sued for rigging worldwide prices of the $9 trillion market
for government and government-linked agency bonds. It was a private
lawsuit – obviously. The US Treasury (one of the victims) doesn't
dare bring suit against Wall Street and will never actually name
individuals as being crooks and thieves. .

Box
Score:
As of
5/21/16's Washington Post poll, it's Trump with 46% of the vote,
Clinton 44%. In the “disliked” category they were tied, with 57%
despising both.

Repeat
After Me:Antibiotics will soon
stop working and cause major health treatments from
caesarean sections and joint replacements to chemotherapy and
staying overnight in a hospital.

Smoke
Among The Ashes:
Former Senator Bob Graham, a member of the joint congressional
inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, has sought the release of the complete
report – including the famous 28 pages – for over a decade. He
suspects the redacted material would show that very senior members of
the Saudi government provided support to the attackers and that the
same people continue to provide Saudi government funding to terrorist
groups like al Qaeda and ISIS.

Hand
In Hand:
Bayer, the aspirin people, want to buy Monsanto and create “the
world’s largest seed-and-pesticide company”. “Seed and
pesticide” tripping so easily off the tongue as you wash down two
asprin with a glass of Roundup..

Grading
On The Curves:
Media expert Robert McChesney claims that this year's corporate media
coverage of the Democratic primaries “has
been an all-time low. “What we’ve seen is the Sanders campaign
has been largely neglected … And the coverage and the framing of it
has been largely through
the eyes of the establishment for the Hillary Clinton campaign.”

Costume
Party: About
70% of the time the new FindFace app can identify you in a crowd.
The end of anonymity is at hand; time to embrace red
noses,
putty ears, throwaway sunglasses and to
ditch the phone. How
long before trying to conceal your appearance in public will be a
crime?

Definitions:
The majority of Americans support a government-run, single-payer
Medicare-For All health system. I guess they didn't ask Hillary.

Shipping
Slipping:
Moody's has downgraded its view of the North American rail industry
to “negative,” as the long-lasting decline in freight volumes
continues to worsen. But hey, The Recovery!, right?

Unicorns:"Nobody has a
right to record everything we do and say online. Generation Internet
has a right to access information online just as unmonitored and
without inhibition as our parents read the paper.” Right
on, anonymous.

Pattern
Crimes:The
richest families in Florence, Italy today are the same families who
ran the place 700 years ago.

Progressively:
American neocons – who've been remarkably quiet on the matter –
must be delighted with their new Brazilian president; he chose a
creationist to be his science minister, a man who deforested large
tracts of the rainforest as agricultural minister and picked not a
single woman for his cabinet.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

TSA
Precheck:Whoever would have
imagined that a program where citizens could pay for better treatment
from “their” government would backfire? Who
decided that forcing folks to wait three hours to get abused would
encourage them to pay the government for the privilege of being
searched?

Ooops:
The CIA reports that their IG's office has “mistakenly” and
“inadvertently” destroyed its copy of the Senate torture report
at the same time the Justice Department was assuring a federal judge
that copies were being preserved... somewhere. The Agency claims
there's another copy somewhere at Langley, they think. But then,
these are the same guys who destroyed hours of videotapes of the
waterboarding torture of two “detainees”.

Friends: The US Senate
has passed a bill that
will permit September 11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia for damages.
Think they know something we don't?

Wait,
Wait, Don't Tell Me:
Congress insists that 42,525 TSA employees is sufficient, and,
perhaps it is, but the TSA is between 4,000 and 6,000 screeners
short. But don't worry, they're going to hire an extra 768 by June
15 – but they're losing 100 a week, so pack light and get there
three hours early. Better yet, take the bus.

Recycling:
In a preview – or warning – of things to come, the Clinton
campaign has assembled a “massive brain trust” made up of most of
the policy wonks responsible for the mess we're in, both
domestically and in our foreign adventures.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Capitalism's
power seems insurmountable. So did the divine right of kings.

The
Word:
Responding to the complaints of those who miss their flights standing
in line to be embarrassed by the crap that is supposed to make us
feel safe on airplanes (while we pretend not to know that the
TSA fails to find
weapons 90% of the time), the TSA has come up with a solution: Get
to the airport at least three hours before your flight and pay us
extra money to skip most of the bullshit.

Sobering
Data: The
National Highway Traffic
Safety folks say that drivers under the influence of marijuana were
“no more likely to
crash than who had not used any drugs or alcohol prior to driving.”
Those on alcohol
continue accumulate DUI/DWI tickets until they kill someone.

It's
A SNAP: About
all those folks living high on food stamps: A family on food stamps
gets $253 a month in
benefits, about
$127 per month
per person. Most food
stamp recipients live in Republican controlled states (think on that
for a bit). Half of us – those between 20 and 65 will need this
sort of help at some time in their lives. The majority of SNAP
recipients have jobs (but don't make enough to survive),
or are over 65. One in
five of the little leeches is a child. Let 'em eat cake.

If
Only: For four
consecutive days Portugal ran entirely on renewable energy, mostly
from wind generators facing the ocean breezes. Bless 'em.

Nutshelled:Hillary's
promise to put Bill “in
charge of revitalizing the economy” is exactly what's wrong
with her whole campaign. Been there, done that – and Bill's legacy
is in all the jobs shipped overseas and all the young blacks
incarcerated for profit in our prisons. She's saying “Don't vote
for me, vote for Bill!” And that's a good thing because she is a
lousy candidate. Sure, she may turn out to be good once in office,
but she has no charisma and is not the natural politician Mr. Clinton
is. Her
handlers hope the voters
will overlook her inherent inelectabilty in favor of her
her résumé and policy-wonk reputation. Maybe. But it didn't
work for Al Gore (he couldn't even
persuade 5 out of 9 when it counted). If
Hillary were clearly the choice of elected, pledged delegates then
she would not need superdelegates. She does and therein lies her
doom, and quite possibly ours.

Lay
That Burden Down:In
each year from 2006 to 2012, at least two-thirds of all active
corporations had no federal income tax liability. Among large
corporations (generally those with at least $10 million in assets),
42.3% paid no federal income tax in 2012.

We'll
Always Have Chicago:
After an audit of 5% of the votes in Chicago's Democratic primary
showed that “the numbers didn't match”, the Chicago Board of
Elections decided that the sample was just a sample and could not be
used to challenge or change the results of the election. All it did
was prove tht there was fraud, which everybody expects, Chicago being
Chicago. Right Jack?

Sad
But True:“Civil disobedience
is the only way left to fight climate change.”

Oil
And The Squeaky Wheel: To
have a growing economy, wages of non-elite workers must
grow, for if they are not paid to produce the goods they will not
have the money to buy the goods. This simple fact seems very
difficult for bankers and politicians to understand. The
US economy
is in trouble because
the production/consumption cycle is broken. The global economy is in
trouble because the productive workers in the developed world are not
paid enough to replace the unemployed consumers in American and
Europe. Rising
consumer debt
can be used to hide this problem for a while, but
such a practices has an
endpoint, which we seem to be close to reaching. Expanding
dept require expanding energy supplies, but we can no longer afford
the oil it would take to rescue us, or to pay the debt we must
shoulder to generate the oil in the first place.

DIY
Humor: A
school district in NC is letting students carry pepper spray because
it “"may be
useful for students who encounter transgender classmates in the
bathroom."

Wars
of
the World:
America is a weapons factory and
the White House a war room, exporting
war and mass poverty as it attempts to colonize the planet. It is a continuation of
the rapine on which the country was founded and prospered, first by
civilizing the natives into irrelevance and then by spreading its
messianic joy through an ever expanding empire of dependencies,
trust territories and outright colonies. Once again American is out
to civilize the world, spreading democracy a corpse at a time through
a series of humanitarian wars, bombing hospitals to promote human
rights and killing thousands to prevent genocide. And we're the Good
Guys.

Clarification:
You have no reasonable expectation of privacy anymore. Anywhere.
Your TV listens in. Your smartphone is smarter than you think and is
not on your side. The Yield sign by the bus stop listens to you, as
do microphones the FBI has salted away in trees and rocks and trash
cans. It happens all
the time, and the FBI doesnot even
need a warrant to do it.

Shut
Up And Stay In Line:
Homeland Security's boss says that the obscenely long lines at TSA
checkpoints are not “a national crisis” and are not going to go
away, because the exercise in daycare for adults is supposed to
reassure the public that the government is doing something to make
them feel safer. Not to make us safer, mind you, but to make us feel
that way. “There’s
no specific credible threat,” he
acknowledged, but
it is mandatory that “Americans will have to shut up and stand in
line. Quietly, obediently, with your shoes off and pants slipping
down your legs.”

Co-dependent:
After 45 years and over $1 trillion wasted on The War On Drugs,
America has such an extensive network of bureaucrats and cops and
prisons dependent on the continuing flow of money (and the hapless
bodies the process requires) that the political (and economic) will
to end the useless exercise simply does not, and cannot, exist.

Over
There Is Over Here:
When the press and our politicians start going on about
'repatriating' the profits that companies like Microsoft, Apple and
Facebook (and literally hundreds of others) have parked overseas,
please remember that “bringing the profits home” will not affect
the US economy very much at all – because the money is already
invested here. It is not sitting in a suitcase in the Caymans, it is
invested in US Treasuries, US corporate bonds and stocks and so on.
So while it is officially not here, it is here and earning more money
– tax free because i'ts not here even though it is. But the
ownership is hidden through a longstanding series of legal fictions
that the rich have no desire to see undone. So they won't be.

Friday, May 13, 2016

Don’t
worry, the recession’s over and everything’s better now. They
say.

Unsettling
but not definitive:Unemployment
claims increased 20,000 to 294,000 last week, after a 17,000 increase
the week before. This is the highest rate since February 2015, and
the steepest increase since 2005. Economists say this doesn't mean
anything and is mostly due to spring break.

Globalization:
It's not just in the US; a Catholic Diocese in India has reinstated
a priest
who has admitted to previously sexually abusing children.

Working,
Or Not, On the Railroad:
Freight shipments on US railroads continue to fall m/m, as they have
been doing for well over a year. Sure the US doesn't make much
anymore, but even the imports have to get to Walmart somehow.

Quota
System:“Workers in plants
run by the largest U.S. poultry producers are regularly being denied
bathroom breaks and as a result some
are reduced to wearing diapers while working.”

Over
Here: About a
third of the handful of manufacturing jobs that haven't been shipped
to Bangladesh or Pakistan or such pay so little that the workers have
to rely on welfare for food and healthcare. Freely traded, of
course.

Pause:
A US District Judge has ruled that Obama does not have the
Constitutional authority
to spend billions of dollars on ACA subsidies without the approval of
Congress through the appropriations process. This would cripple the
ACA if upheld on appeal.

The
Quiet
Misery
of the Unnecessary:
Americans are killing themselves in large numbers – an epidemic
bigger than AIDS and just as deadly. In large measure it is
middle-aged
white Americans – once the most privileged group on the planet
– are dying much sooner than they used to. Many are killing
themselves, either directly and intentionally, or just a
bit less intentionally and directly with booze and opioids and
illegal drugs. They have no jobs and no future. They find themselves
superfluous, unnecessary, unwanted and ignored by their government.
America has become a place where a significant part of the population
has been rendered unnecessary. And they know it. Unsurprisingly,
those
with the highest rates of drug overdose, suicide and alcoholism are
also the most likely to be supporters of Donald Trump. These are the
same people who, in another life, elected Adolf Hitler.

As
Is:The
United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution reminding its
members not
to kill doctors or bomb hospitals.

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Turkish
Delight:
Turkey's tyrant-in-waiting Recip Erdogan took time of from
blackmailing
Europe to assure the world that the presidential system he
intends to install “won't be the same as that of the US
– nor will it have anything in common with the dictatorships of
Africa.” He's sure
that once he becomes dictator for life by universal acclimation
everyone will be happy, happy, happy. Well, almost
everyone. Or
else.

Graduation
Advice:
“The real
secrets of creating a fortune are not genius, leadership, risking
your own money, or lots of hard work. They’re chutzpah, who you
know, and luck. And the greatest of these is plain old luck. Oh boy,
is it luck.” Nike's Phil Knight.

Patriotism:
Belgian-owned Budwiser is renaming its beer “America” and plans
to adorn the cans with pictures of the Statue of Liberty and
Washington Monument and phrases from the Pledge of Allegiance, lyrics
from The Star Spangled Banner and America The Beautiful. I don't buy
Bud and am going to make a conscious effort to dedicate my non-beer
buying to these folks from
now on.

Bob
And Weave:
After insisting that the country had done all it could to make
healthcare available and affordable, and that the fight for a
universal single-payer system had already been lost, Hillary now
wants to change the rules so that people 50 or 55 and up could “buy
in” to Medicare – sort of Medicare For More. Not that this is in
any way similar to Bernie Sanders' Medicare For All. Ms. Clinton was
pretty vague about eligibility and costs and who would foot the bill
and how much more insurance companies would drain
from the Federal government. But, hey, she cares...

Hurdles:
Before the Clinton team can comfortably tuck the election away, they
will have to deal with the restive Sanders voters - half of whom, at
least in West Virginia, say they would vote for Trump in the Fall if
Clinton is the candidate.

Secret
Votes:
A lot of Trump support is not reflected in the polls because, quite
simply, a lot of people who are going to end up voting for him are
ashamed to admit it. For example, “A
third of those who voted in West Virginia’s Democratic primary say
they plan to back Trump in November. Sanders won those voters by a
wide margin”.

Our Motto

Keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.